I push open the door of a hair salon a few doors down, and the smell of cheap peach shampoo smacks me in the face, the fluorescent light dances on my eyelids so I have to close them, and the music is so loud the floor seems to vibrate. I can see my Jello nurse – the ‘raver’ version – doing his thing in here. When I open my eyes there are three of them behind the desk, giving me the goggle-eyes. They all have that cheap white bleach and short crop going on.

‘Just a blow-dry,’ I say.

They look at each other, not knowing what to say. Have they never had to wash ganky hair before? Oh come on, guys, surely it isn’t as bad as giving head. A filthy, tiring occupational hazard. My own head is coming back to its usual thrum and throttle of thoughts jumbling and tossing about in there, and I’m quite enjoying it now.

‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid we’re very busy, fully booked.’

I look around at the near-empty room. ‘I’ll wait.’ I sit myself down on the shiny plastic couch and pick up a three-month-old copy of Heat magazine.

A helium voice, that could be male or female, speaks. ‘I can do you in five.’

Do I imagine it or do the hands lathering my head have plastic gloves on them? I can’t see, but it’s a different kind of tug at the root, a kind of a pinch and pull on the hair shaft. I close my eyes and inhale peach. My hair is wrapped in a turban and I’m led to a chair squished in between two others who are both at the blow-dry stage. Why do they do this, when the rest of the salon is empty? My head is banging from the heat and the noise and the musak on a loop: ‘… clap your hands if you know what happiness is to you …’

A pixie-guy glides his way across to me and smiles at me with an overly familiar, arch kind of friendliness. I’m not in the mood to make chit-chat and I know where this one would lead: do you have a boyfriend, where do you go clubbing, you’re how old? No way, have you ever thought of modelling? Oh but no, of course you’re too short. And homeless, mister. I can sense he feels dissed by my insistence on reading the latest ‘celebs with cellulite’ snaps instead, and he pulls my hair a little too roughly. I pretend not to notice.

‘Straight or with bounce?’ he asks.

‘Straight.’ And I look back down at the page. Nicole Kidman is covered in the stuff, but then she is pretty ancient.

‘All done,’ he says when he’s finished, ‘and don’t you look a picture?’